1 Samuel 27:1 - Joseph Benson’s Commentary on the Old and New Testaments

I shall perish one day by the hand of Saul David, says Delaney, “weary of wandering, weary of struggling with Saul's implacable spirit, weary of the unequal conflict between too dangerous generosity and too relentless malice, weary of subsisting by the spoils of his enemies, or bounty of his friends, resolves at last to quit his country, and throw himself once more under the protection of its enemies. This resolution is, I think, universally censured by commentators, on account of his neglecting to consult God, either by his priest or by his prophet, before he fixed upon it. God had commanded him to go into the land of Judah, 1 Samuel 22:5. And surely he should not have left that to go into a heathen country, without a like divine command, or at least permission. Therefore most writers ascribe this resolution to want of grace, and a proper confidence in the protection of that God who had so often and so signally delivered him in the greatest exigencies.” Add to this, that David not only showed, by forming and executing this resolution, great distrust of God's promise and providence, and that after repeated demonstrations of God's peculiar care over him; but he voluntarily run upon that rock, which he censured his enemies for throwing him upon, 1 Samuel 26:19, and upon many other snares and dangers, as the following history will show. And he also deprived the people of God of those succours which he might have given them in case of a battle. God, however, permitted him to be thus withdrawn from the Israelites, that they might fall by the hand of the Philistines, without any reproach or inconvenience to David.